Mind Body Brew

The following post was written by TaraMarie Perri, the Founder/Director of The Perri Institute for Mind and Body. Her professional work is dedicated to yoga education and research, holistic health therapeutics, and the integration of mind/body practices with the arts and sciences. TaraMarie holds an MFA and serves on Faculty at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She maintains private practices in New York City and Brooklyn.

In mid-May, I visited my dear friends at their home on the banks of Lake Champlain in Westport, NY. My times with them are always special--getting back to nature, recalling how to unwind, and celebrating the art of living. On a daily basis, I enjoy their spectacular surroundings as we kayak, hike, boat, or venture to their local farm to visit the animals.

It is not difficult to enjoy the views and sounds of nature in the region. But when I get to experience them through the eyes and ears of my good friend, Felix, the landscape becomes even more alive. Felix is five, and he is one of the most kind, creative, and curious children I have ever known (no surprise, as his parents are exceptional people!). Even at a young age, he embodies the enviable blend of urban hip and country chill.

Each day of my visit, Felix’s mom and I took short hikes and enjoyed investigating the new spring growth of bright green leaves, wildflowers, and orange baby geckos. On the last day of my visit, we followed a short trail--Felix accompanied us because he was not in school that day. As we walked along in a line, we talked about our watch for edible fiddleheads. We told him about the purple trillium we had seen each day and the hope of locating a white variety. From time to time, Felix squatted down to pull leaves to carry, and to touch the different fern textures.

Then the real magic began.

“Look, mama, this is a pink lady slipper!” Felix exclaimed. We marveled at his knowledge of this delicate wildflower’s name, and he proceeded to tell us how it would look as a bud before the open petals we saw. Later, “Oh, I found a Jack in the Pulpit!” Both of us had not seen this special little growth hidden under a cluster of other leaves. We gathered around to discuss its unique design. Once again, we were amazed that he had such an interactive presence to see things we walked right over. I started to watch Felix walk, and realized that Felix was not thinking about finishing the walk or following the trail—he was looking around on the path as we went and truly seeing the details. He was the best kind of mindful trail-walking companion. When our adult eyes fixed downward to take in the view to either side, Felix would look around, change levels, get down on his hands and knees, and dig in to the richness of nature.

His enthusiasm for finding other varieties, his pauses to touch a leaf or unfurl a fiddlehead (“You can unfurl them and create a new kind of curl, TaraMarie!”), and his happiness when we encountered another large-leafed trillium awakened me to the hidden joys of our hike.

By the time we exited the trail, Felix had collected a pine branch in one hand and a leaf cluster in the other. He turned around and waved his arms out to the side as if in a wide embrace of his forest friends. “Bye thistles! Bye trillium! See you later! Or tomorrow even,” were his parting words.

Five-year old Felix was our fearless leader and wilderness teacher on the trail.

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” - Andrew Wyeth

I grew up just miles away from the historic Brandywine River Valley in Pennsylvania, one region in the northeast where the three-generational Wyeth family of artists and illustrators worked. In addition to a collection at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Maine, the Wyeth's art collection is preserved in our beloved Brandywine River Museum, located near several landmarks that often appear in their body of work. Growing up in the exact surroundings that appeared on several canvases in the collection, it is probable that the Wyeths were the first visual artists who influenced me via shared intimacy with their subjects.

Andrew's work has always intrigued me the most. It is no surprise to me that Andrew prefers Winter and Fall, as many of his paintings depicted the essence of those seasons. Just seeing one of his paintings instantly makes me pine for my rural Pennsylvania surroundings with a fireplace, rugged boots, and rustic outerwear. However, his landscapes and compositions are also injected with lonely tones of seasonal light. Further, they may offer the viewer an inkling that there is a story or a mystery lurking just behind a stone barn or off in the distance beyond a bank of snow. As a result, his paintings can also seem strange, even unsettling, at times.

Imagine my surprise when that same strange and unsettled sensibility I get when I look at the scenes in his work came to me Saturday morning when I was in urban Washington Square Park, NYC. The day was a sunny one, but all around me were crunchy, dead leaves and the earthy scents of Fall. There was tangible flux and weight to the air, and heavy shadows of limited light passed quickly over the buildings. Even in a busy public park sitting with friends on a bench, there was a peculiar sense of loneliness. Strange.

I also relate to Andrew's concept of "bone structure of the landscape" and can see how this image is a macro image for our micro experience in our own bone structures. We might sense the effects of the current seasons in our bodies; our hair becomes brittle, our skin gets dry, our moods are heavier, and our sleeping patterns might be altered. Therefore, we also become unsettled.

In addition to "dead", "lonely", "strange", "unsettled", the transition between late Fall and Winter might also be described as fragile, but perhaps delicate is a better word. Delicate implies intricacy. Delicacy also sounds deliberate, as the change of seasons, the unfolding of Winter's tales must be.

Personally, I have always struggled with late Fall and Winter in terms of cooler temperatures and shorter days, but the idea that I could be walking through an Andrew Wyeth landscape (an urban version, of course) brings me a new excitement for the season ahead. Donning my rugged boots, I will walk along and tune into the delicate changes in my own bones, as shared with the bone structure of nature. What tale lurks for me under the snow? Or behind that leafless tree? What is awaiting me underneath my footsteps on the cold earth?

Browse some images of Andrew Wyeth's work and share your impressions of the worlds he paints. One of my favorites is his piece which accompanies this post, Trodden Weed (1951)

Mindbodybrew is ultimately about providing a space for written reflection at every step along the yoga path. We hope that by sharing assignments from our Teacher Trainees, we can expand their deep investigation into community-wide dialogue. The following is an excerpt of a piece written by one of our newest, current trainees, Kathy Hartsell, regarding svadhyaya, or self-study.

Last Wednesday we gathered together for the first yoga class of the school year at Tisch. Anticipation was high and grounding much needed. As it was only the third day returning to movement after an extended time off for most of us, our bodies were a little in shock and in definite need of conscientious aligning. Luckily for us, our teacher, TaraMarie Perri, based her class around the visual aid of Andy Goldsworthy – an incredible sculptor, photographer, and environmentalist who emphasizes the perfection and simplicity of nature in its original state. I really appreciated her visual cues to alignment, especially on the first day back when the connection and ability to tap into the body is rusty. Bringing elements of nature into the classroom served two purposes: one spiritual, the other anatomical; both were very grounding.

Perhaps the most informative clues to our internal environments exist in our external surrounding. The delicate balance of nature suggests harmonies and stabilities that we try to mimic on our mats and in our practice. Goldsworthy’s sculptures, created out of stones, branches, ice, a multitude of materials, reveal a silent efficacy. The elements he uses recognize how to work with each other and their surroundings so discretely it takes the viewer a second to realize that the materials were redirected and shaped, that they were not always an intricate design in the landscape. We similarly are continuously being redirected and reshaped to thrive in our changing landscapes. It is from this implicit place of inner alignment that a deeper spiritual ground becomes available. Goldsworthy verbalized that concept in an interview in The Observer revealing that, “Everything has the energy of its making inside it…There is no doubt that the internal space of a rock or a tree is important to me. But when I get beneath the surface of things, these are not moments of mystery, they are moments of extraordinary clarity”. This kind of clarity is not limited to a visual clarity; rather, it extends far beyond that, manifesting itself in physical, spiritual, and emotion on the mat.

Through the practice there was one image that stayed with me – a photograph of uneven stones balanced perfectly on top of each other, extending up towards the open sky and grounding down into the sand. I particularly enjoyed this image because it baffled me – how can a stone stay balanced atop an ascending stack when it is only being supported on one side? Kaminoff put this into perspective in his spine section of Yoga Anatomy. Each individual vertebra varies in shape, just as the stones, and yet all remain balanced. Each stone finds a way to distribute and absorb the energies of the stones surrounding them. Astonishingly, these columns exist so solidly on continuously moving bases. The stones maintain an upright position despite the rotation of the planet, quiet tremors deep under the crust, and the ever-shifting plates of the Earth. They understand the right equilibrium, just as each vertebra remains intact and supportive through all sorts of flexion, extension, and twisting.

Goldsworthy tests the limits of nature just as we test the limits of the human body. The complex positions that he creates with nature and we create with our bodies exist with ease through the right intent and the correct execution of energies. We can learn a lot from our surroundings, and from the simplicity and silent revelations that unfold in and out of our practice. Sometimes the most moving information is discovered off of the mat, outside in the real world.

MindBodyBrew is a space for pondering, working through, revisiting, and deliberating. We delight in the examination of that which we think we already know. We don’t claim to have everything figured out. Rather, we aim to plant seeds that can lead to careful thought and consequential choices. We invite you to join us in our exploration into living a mindful life.

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